


What Children Do

by Lauralot



Series: Alexander Pierce should have died slower [36]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dolls, Gen, Guilt, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Infertility, Non-Sexual Age Play, Past Abuse, Stuffed Toys, Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lauralot/pseuds/Lauralot
Summary: Natasha and Bucky have mostly worked out their issues with the Bearvengers.But Natasha's hesitant to try other games.





	What Children Do

**Author's Note:**

> This installment is partially based on two short stories in the APSHDS universe, one being an interlude I wrote and the other being a story by [WhatEvenAmI.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatEvenAmI/pseuds/WhatEvenAmI) I definitely recommend reading both of them now if you haven't before so that you won't be confused:
> 
> [ _Baby Bear_ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3705493/chapters/8847934)   
>  [ _The Sad Little Bunny_ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4195374/chapters/14978431)
> 
> But if you don't have time or you're just impatient because it's been 364 days since I last updated this series (which I am very sorry about) then the Cliff Notes version of the stories is as follows: Once, Tasha made Bucky Bear be the baby when they played house and he hated it, and also Abigail Pierce, Alexander Pierce's daughter, mailed Bucky the blue bunny that used to be hers before Pierce gave it to the Soldier. It was her way of apologizing for her father's actions, as well as trying to come to terms with what she learned her father was doing.

**But you know what children do with Barbie dolls—it’s a bit scary, actually.**  
—Cate Blanchett

“Bucky Bear hates house.”

Tasha stops putting the groceries in the play kitchen refrigerator, giving Bucky Bear a look and a very loud sigh. “Bucky Bear hates _everything_ ,” she says. “He’s even grumpy on Bearvenger missions.”

“He is not,” Bucky protests. “He’s just focused.”

“He was grumpy when Hawkbear got to come up with the plan last time,” Crystal points out. She came over to play and now Bucky Bear is glowering in her direction and growling about betrayal.

“Because that plan was stupid!” Bucky Bear felt very strongly that just because the Bearvengers could use arrows, it didn’t mean they _should,_ and Bucky had to agree.

Tasha rolls her eyes. “Bucky Bear’s just jealous that he didn’t think of it first.”

“We play Bearvenger missions all the time,” Crystal adds. “What’s wrong with house, Bucky Bear?”

“He doesn’t want to be the baby.” The Worths have been working with Bucky Bear on being more open with his feelings, with a lot of talk about how no one will punish him, laugh at him, or use it against him if he tells about things that make him unhappy or scared. And playing house the last time made Bucky Bear really, really unhappy. He’d been so mad at first that he wanted to maul Tasha. And even though he doesn’t feel that bad now, he still doesn’t want to play. He’s very loud about that. “He hates it.”

“He doesn’t have to be the baby.” Tasha’s voice is soft. “Not if it makes him feel bad.” She reaches out and pats Bucky Bear’s head, carefully resting her hand between his sensitive ears. “Somebody else can do it.”

“What about Bunny?” Crystal asks.

Bunny’s sitting on the couch, wrapped up in what Captain Ameribear deemed Safety Blankets. They’re very soft and thick. Bunny’s only been to the playroom a few times because he’s scared of big open spaces. He’s also scared of Bearvenger missions and he wasn’t sure about Crystal since he’d never met her before, which is why he’s in the Safety Blankets now.

But house isn’t scary or violent like Bearvenger missions can get. It’s calm and soft. And Bunny loves to be snuggled and rocked and taken care of. To be little. “He can play,” Bucky says.

Except when Bucky looks at Bunny now, he doesn’t see the couch where he and Tasha build forts or listen to Bruce’s story or where Clint gave Bucky Bear stitches. He sees a room that’s all bright colors and stuffed toys and now the air is thick with something syrupy sweet and _wrong_ , and how can Bunny _want_ to be the baby, Abby Pierce gave Bunny to Bucky to protect him and he’s putting him right back where Daddy trapped them both and—

“Bucky.”

Tasha’s squeezing his hand. While Bucky’s looking down at that, he sees Crystal reach out and take the other one.

“Does Bunny want to play?” Tasha asks.

“Uh-huh.” Bucky’s tummy is heavy and churning, and he can tell he’s scaring Bunny. Why did he ever tell Abby that he’d take care of her rabbit? All he’s doing is making it worse. “But—”

“If he really wants to play,” Tasha says, “then he can play. He doesn’t need to feel bad for what he wants.”

“We’d love to play with you, Bunny.” Crystal gives Bucky’s hand a squeeze before she lets go, shuffling over to the couch to pick Bunny up.

They play house. Bucky Bear and Red Panda are guard dogs. Crystal is a theoretical physicist, like she is in almost every game. Tasha says she’s an interior designer, but both she and Crystal work from home so they can watch over Bunny and Beezus and Iron Bee. Beezus and Iron Bee are twins and high schoolers and Tasha says they’re going through a rebellious phase. They buzz a lot. Charlotte delivers the mail.

Bunny even gets to stay wrapped up in his safety blankets. Tasha spends a lot of time rocking him and singing to him and just holding him tight. This house doesn’t feel like his last daddy’s: cold and always a little scary. This house seems like it would be always open and sunny, and even Bucky Bear’s enjoying himself.

“This was fun,” Crystal says when Mayling comes to pick her up. “Bearvenger missions are cool and all, but we always play them and it’s fun to do new stuff too, you know? Maybe you could get some dolls in case Bunny doesn’t always feel up to house.”

Crystal’s too busy with her jacket to notice, but Bucky doesn’t miss the way Tasha’s gone still and quiet when she says goodbye.

*

Glaurung is rumblestrutting.

He’s mostly adjusted to his new roommates, Norberta and Ramoth, over the past month. The lady at the animal shelter had said that guinea pigs did best in groups, and male guinea pigs were usually calmer around females than they were with other boys. But Glaurung had still taken a while to come around.

The girls had been in a separate cage at first, and Glaurung had glowered at them for what felt like hours, waving his hindquarters and vibrating lowly. Now they can all share a living space mostly without issue, but sometimes Glaurung still feels compelled to assert dominance.

“Quit that,” Bucky says, trying to distract him with a piece of lettuce. When that fails, he opens the camera on his phone and starts to record. This seems like the perfect thing to send to Rumlow. With the caption “Rumlow-strutting,” of course.

Norberta and Ramoth seem pretty content just ignoring Glaurung, munching on their own greens.

“You can’t stop a dragon.” Natasha’s lounging on Bucky’s bed. She’s wearing one of Clint’s hoodies, and his DS must have been in the pocket, because she’s playing with it now. “You can only hope to contain him.”

“Does Clint ever notice when you steal his stuff?”

“I decided to see how long it’d take him to realize I was swiping his clothes once,” Natasha says. Bucky can faintly hear the Animal Crossing music from the DSxS s. “He just started buying new shirts when he noticed he was running out.”’

“Maybe he thought Lucky ate them,” Bucky suggests. Glaurung finally stops rumblestrutting and starts to gnaw at the lettuce Bucky’s dangling in front of him.

Natasha shrugs. “Maybe he knew it was me all along, but he figured he’d see how long I’d keep it up.”

“Instead of just stealing his stuff back?”

She snorts. “Clint learned a long time ago not to go up against me in prank wars.”

Bucky’s phone chimes with a text. Rumlow.

_Thanks a lot, asshole,_ the text reads. _The off-brand soldiers saw your hamster video and now they’re imitating it at me like a bunch of brain-damaged mimes._

_My heart bleeds for you,_ Bucky types in reply. _And he’s a guinea pig._ He does have the slightest bit of sympathy for Rumlow’s predicament, having been subject to the duckling soldiers’ nonsense more than a few times himself, but as long as they’re preoccupied with harassing Rumlow, at least they aren’t continuing to baby-proof the facility for Bucky’s next visit.

_Baby._

Bucky frowns down at his phone, remembering Tasha’s reaction when Crystal mentioned dolls. She’d gone so still, the way Bucky used to when the Soldier side of him expected a beating or worse. Was it the mention of dolls? Bucky couldn’t remember the Red Room ever using them, but he’d worked with older girls on the rare occasions he was there. They could have been part of the training; the Red Room sent girls of every age on missions, and a little girl who didn’t know how to cradle a baby doll or didn’t want to brush an older doll’s hair might raise some eyebrows.

Or maybe there had been punishments for keeping toys acquired on missions. Natasha had said that she wanted to be little so she could play the way that _she_ liked instead of doing what she had to in order to properly infiltrate. She could have smuggled a doll back to the Red Room and suffered when it was discovered.

“Hey, Nat.”

“Hmm?” Natasha doesn’t look away from the screen, thumbs tapping at the buttons.

Bucky hesitates. The guidelines they set after the Soldier hit Natasha say that they aren’t supposed to lie by omission. But that doesn’t make it okay for Bucky to up and ambush her with questions about something that could really hurt. And what if he’s making something out of nothing? Maybe Nat just doesn’t like dolls, and she’d stiffened up because she didn’t want to be rude to Crystal.

But Bunny’s propped up against the pillow by Natasha, his ears drooping. He’d been quiet when he first came to the Tower, even quieter than he is now. Bucky Bear could barely hear him speak. Bunny had felt so awful he couldn’t ask for help. He didn’t even feel like he deserved help. But he had. What if Nat’s also suffering in silence? What kind of friend would Bucky be if he didn’t at least ask?

“Earlier, uh.” Bucky looks down at his lap. He doesn’t want to come off like he’s scrutinizing Natasha, interrogating her. “When Crystal was talking about different games…is there something you don’t like about dolls?”

Silence hangs between them. It stretches out so unbearably long that Bucky forces himself to wrench his head up. Natasha isn’t tapping on the DS anymore. She isn’t crying or grimacing either. She’s just staring off at the wall, her jaw tense, and Bucky can’t tell the complete lack of reaction is worse than a breakdown would have been.

“It’s not dolls,” Natasha says abruptly.

Bucky almost jumps. Glaurung must sense the tension in the room, because he retreats behind his new sisters.

“Not really,” she continues. “It’s…I don’t know how to say it.”

“That’s okay,” Bucky says. “It doesn’t have to make sense.”

Bucky Bear adds that Iron Bear almost never makes sense, and the Bearvengers still manage to get through missions anyway.

Natasha’s silent again. She’s biting on her lip just slightly, but it’s out of character enough to make Bucky run cold. Nat almost never shows outward signs of stress, not unless she’s acting. And she’s not acting now.

“We don’t play house very often,” she says finally.

Bucky nods. “I always figured that’s ‘cause Bucky Bear pitched a fit about it.”

Bucky Bear bristles at the implication that his reaction was anything less than fully justified, but then he seems to remember that Bunny, who does like house, is in the room, because he doesn’t argue.

“That was part of it.” Natasha tilts her head forward, letting her hair drape over her face. “Or it was a convenient excuse. Or both. But it—it’s like how you acted out missions with your bears.”

There’s still a flush in Bucky’s cheeks thinking about that, even though they’ve talked about it and he knows Natasha isn’t mad anymore. “Wait—they made you play house on a mission?” Maybe it was an exercise in the Red Room? Or some sort of reconnaissance mission where she’d posed as a mother?

“No,” Natasha’s voice is sharp and Bucky tenses. She sighs, shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry. No, I’m not acting out missions. It just…feels the same. It’s like I’m forcing my own issues on our games, without your consent.”

“I don’t feel that way.” Bucky had played out the mission where he shot Natasha, with her, with their toys. He can’t remember anything in either game of house that could come close to that, even with Bucky Bear’s rage over being the baby. Tasha had just wrapped him in blankets, she hadn’t made him play fucked up power games or tried to molest him. And she’d made sure Bunny was okay with being the baby before they played today. How could she take such pains to make him feel safe and still feel guilty?

“Well, it’s not like I went and told you.” Nat sighs again, rubbing at her forehead. “I don’t even _want_ kids. Even if I did, I’m not stupid enough to subject them to the sort of life where their mother’s always rushing off on covert ops and might never come home.”

Bucky isn’t sure what to say to that, so he just listens.

“But that’s not the same as having no choice,” Natasha continues. “It makes you feel incomplete. Broken.”

“I know,” Bucky mumbles. He does; no matter how many times his doctors and friends say that how he got involved in ageplay doesn’t matter as long as it helps him now, part of him still feels _wrong_ and gross for inflicting his issues on everyone. Like he’s a constant reminder of Pierce’s mind games to all his friends. And that’s not even getting into the nagging self-loathing worry that he’s a pathetic, broken man-child for _needing_ to be little at all.

There’s no amount of reassurance and lived experience that can completely snuff those fears out.

“I can’t be that person.” Natasha has her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. Bucky doesn’t think he’s seen her look so vulnerable since he hit her. “Even if I wanted to be. So what do I get out of acting it out?”

“My doctors say—” Bucky begins, but Nat’s still speaking.

“And it’s not even just about fertility. It’s everything. Everything that society says girls ought to do—the dolls, the happy families, baking apple pie and having breakfast on the table and lipstick and dating and riding in cars with boys and _everything._ That’s not me. Even before I graduated it wasn’t, and it never will be.”

“So?” Bucky manages.

Natasha glances at him through her hair.

He flushes; that came out unintentionally dismissive. “I mean—so you’re not that girl. But in our games—that’s what they are, games. You can be anything you want.”

“But they aren’t just games.” Her voice is flat. “Even if they look normal. They’re an assassin playing at innocence. Acting out the life I don’t deserve, and dragging you along for the ride.”

“You’re talking to the Winter Soldier.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not—”

“Nat. Look. We could turn this into a pissing match about which of us is least deserving to play Happy Normal People, but what’s the point? The stuff we do—both of us, it’s because we’re messed up. Or were. Or still are.” Now it’s Bucky shaking his head. Why do the Worths’ words of reassurance come so easily when he’s directing them at someone else? “My little side comes from what an emotionally broken weapon thought a kid would be. Your childhood was—I don’t know—was terrorized and conditioned away. Maybe we are garbage. Maybe we don’t deserve it. But even if that’s true, what does it hurt anybody for us to be selfish with some toys in the privacy of our home?”

Bucky Bear points out that there’s not a lot of privacy with JARVIS around all the time. Bunny quietly suggests that that’s beside the point right now.

“You’re not garbage, Bucky.” Natasha’s voice has gone soft.

“And I don’t think you are either. But even if you—even if we were, not everything in the garbage is trash, right?” Okay, so that makes no sense. “I mean, uh, people practically line up around NYU to go dumpster diving for the stuff people throw out when they leave the dorms, don’t they?”

Nat actually smiles a little. “Clint always says it’s unbelievable the food people will toss out.”

Bucky isn’t sure if she’s referring to Clint’s childhood or if he still goes dumpster diving when he gets hungry on the streets. It seems plausible. Not that it matters at the moment. “Right. You’re the Black Widow. I’m the Winter Soldier. The whole world knows our dirty secrets. They watched us both questioned in court.” His face still burns at the memory, like always. “So what if you want to play house sometimes? Or have dolls? My sisters had dolls. Becca used to pretend her dolls were slowly drowning on the Titanic. Kids are creepy, Nat. Anything we do in the playroom or wherever, I bet there’s some kid who’s got us topped. HYDRA and the Red Room, they treated us like dolls. So I think you’ve earned the right to play how you want now. You deserve a turn at the wheel.”

There’s another stretch of quiet. 

“You do too,” Natasha says.

Bucky’s staring down at his lap again. Even after making that speech, he doesn’t feel like it. “That’s what my doctors always say.”

“They’re smart.” Natasha brushes her hair back behind her ears. “I should have taken you up on your offer to talk to them, after the other soldiers left.”

“You can come to my next session,” Bucky offers. “Or I can just nag you until you call them, if you want.”

“As great as you annoying me into mental wellness sounds,” Nat says, stretching her legs out, “Right now I need to text Clint.” She picks up her phone from under Bunny’s foot, tapping in her passcode.

“So you can grocery shop in the garbage chutes?” Bucky asks. As usual, he doesn’t manage to dodge the pillow Natasha throws his way.

“Ha ha. And no.” She’s still tapping at the touch screen. “We’re going to need a ride.”

*

“Okay.” Clint’s hair is mussed. Bucky thinks Tasha woke him up with all the texting. He’s sort of slumped in the driver’s seat, one hand resting on top of the steering wheel. “So, getting dolls as a big fu—as a _screw_ you to the past, that I get.”

“You’re going too slow,” Tasha informs him, kicking at the back of his seat. 

Bucky Bear thinks she’s distracting the driver. Bucky Bear also thinks it was a mistake to let Clint drive.

Bunny chose to stay home with Captain Ameribear and his other friends. All the traffic and the noises and people in the toy store made him feel nervous just thinking about it.

“And going to a toy store for instant gratification instead of waiting for delivery, making me drive because you’re too excited to focus on things like speed limits,” Clint continues, ignoring the kicking, “that all makes sense too. But why do _I_ have to buy you dolls? I’m pretty sure your credit cards work no matter how young you feel.”

“It’s payback,” Tasha says. “For saving your life on the last mission.”

“Aw, no,” Clint says. “That’s not fair. _That_ was payback for when I saved your life on the mission before that.”

Tasha rolls her eyes. “You didn’t save my _life._ All you did was help a _little._ I had it under control.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“Did not!”

Tasha’s voice is matter of fact. “Your delusions of grandeur aren’t gonna get you out of buying toys.”

“Look who’s talking about delusions,” Clint begins.

Bucky Bear says they’re both acting like children.

Bucky just smiles and thinks, _Good._

**Author's Note:**

> I want to apologize for the lengthy delay between installments. I had this story idea for a while, but the past year has been a mess of depression and other issues like moving house or being out of the country, and I hadn't had the motivation or energy to keep writing in the moments of free time that I did have. I hope to be more regular from here on out.
> 
> In keeping with Glaurung, Bucky's new guinea pigs are also named after dragons: Norberta from the _Harry Potter_ franchise, and Ramoth from _Dragonriders of Pern_.
> 
> Here are some great stories that have been written or updated in the APSHDS universe during my hiatus:
> 
> [_[Podfic] I Just Wanted to Be Sure of You_ by ](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/APSHDSExpandedUniverse/works/12399942)[Eleke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleke/pseuds/Eleke).  
> [ _A Matter of Penguins_](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12168531/chapters/27618972) by [Jersey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jersey/pseuds/Jersey)  
> [APSHDS Chatlogs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15008462/chapters/34787894) by [WhatEvenAmI](a) and Lauralot.


End file.
